A new year, a new you. Or at least, that’s the assumption. With the N Steps, every day should be a new opportunity and a new chance to change your life. You shouldn’t just wait on an arbitrary date to do something which you can do now.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the swell of commitment to change which is so tied up with the new year. To try something maybe a little scarier than our usual. To reevaluate everything in our lives. To throw out what hasn’t been working and try something crazy and new.

Here at N Steps, we believe that even a week after the official start of the new year, you can still harness that new year’s resolution wave. All around you (or at least online), people are plugging on with new changes and new rules for their lives. Some of them are hitting up thirty day habit changes. Some have started the Whole30 for the first or third time. Some are trying to set goals that will actually work for them this year. Everywhere you turn someone is trying something new while someone else is offering the same advice: be real; be strong; and know your own limits.

I wrote a list this past week, a long list of all the things I wanted to accomplish this year. I sat down with a cup of coffee and my laptop and wrote things like get below 20% body fat and take more photographs. All the things I wanted to change from last year. Then I went through my list and I circled a few things. And I crossed everything else off.

Then I had another cup of coffee and thought hard about what held me back from these things last year. Some of them were the same goals I had had as resolutions in 2011. What held me back? What stopped me? Why didn’t I run as much as I aimed for? Why didn’t I start exercising until June?

What one thing could I change about me or my life that would make attaining my one-year, two-year, five-year goals that much more possible?

What one thing could you change about you or your life?

For me, I realized my largest hurdle was procrastination, disguised as a problem with time management. When I’m afraid, even in the slightest, to do something, I put it off for an hour, a day, a week. And if it’s my own goal, with no real time limit, then it can be put off indefinitely. Until next evaluation time. Until next year.

Then I wrote down what I filled my time with while I was procrastinating and started setting up a plan. Step-by-easily-chewable-step. For me, it was start with a goal each day, even if I have to write it on a piece of paper and put it on my laptop the night before. It doesn’t have to be just one goal, but definitely something I would otherwise put off or be afraid to do. Work on that goal until noon or the goal is accomplished. Then be free to fritter the day away any way I’d like, i.e., cleaning the house, buying groceries, or working on the other things on my list which I didn’t circle.

So what’s stopping you from becoming more awesome and eventual world domination? Is there one thing standing in the way of all your goals? Is there more than one? Is there something you can change now and change every day? You may have to fight for it, and fight hard. A lot of the things holding us back are insidious and nasty, otherwise we wouldn’t have let them hold us back for so long.

Procrastination is something that creeps up every day and for me was the biggest factor in not accomplishing many of my goals last year. This year, chipping away at my urge to procrastinate and building a better time management system that helps keep that urge at bay is my major goal. What’s yours?